What was especially interesting was to dig into the psychology behind some well known headline formulas to begin to understand what makes them so irresistibly clickable. Here’s an overview of what I discovered—8 winning headline formulas and the psychology behind them.

1. Surprise

Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, list surprise as one of the six principles of ideas that are really sticky. According to their research, presenting something unexpected—breaking a pattern—will help you capture attention. This works in two parts: surprise captures our attention, and then interest holds it.

So surprises are more stimulating for us and will get our attention much more easily than things we already know well—even if we really like those things! We may subconsciously prefer an unpredictable experience over what we think we want.

One example of surprise used well was in the casual e-mail subject lines of the Barack Obama presidential campaign. Anyone who shared an address with the campaign got messages, from Barack Obama, with subject lines like “Hey” or “Wow” or Join me for dinner?”

Dropping in curse words like ‘Hell yeah, I like Obamacare” also got big clicks. Most of the $690 million Obama raised online came from these fundraising e-mails, and they worked because they created a surprising dissonance between Barack Obama, presidential candidate, and email subject lines that looked like what you might see in your inbox from a friend.

2. Questions

Questions are powerful in the brain because they prime our curiosity. Just seeing a question mark starts to stimulate your brain; whereas if you already know what you’re going to get from something like a headline, your curiosity might be over before it can even start.

The best question headlines ask something that the reader can empathize with or relate to or would like to see answered. Consider this one, by copywriter Bill Jayme in Psychology Today.

Note how your brain springs into action thinking about your answer and wondering if it’s normal compared to other people’s answers.

3. Curiosity

Viral powerhouse site Upworthy has gained millions of clicks by taking advantage of a psychological phenomenon called the information gap or curiosity gap.

Carnegie Melon University professor George Loewenstein coined this term to describe the gap between what we know and what we want to know. When we notice a gap in our knowledge, it produces a feeling of deprivation. Then we go look for that piece of missing information so we can stop feeling deprived.

Curiosity requires a little bit of initial knowledge. We’re not curious about something we know absolutely nothing about. But as soon as we know even a little bit, our curiosity is piqued and we want to learn more. In fact, research shows that curiosity increases with knowledge: the more we know, the more we want to know.

A Cal Tech study scanned volunteers’ brains while they read trivia questions designed to create a mixture of high and low curiosity. When subjects were interested in a question, the researchers saw more activity in the caudate region—a part of the brain known to be involved in anticipating rewards. (Interesting side note: If they found they had given an incorrect answer, the curiosity effect seemed even stronger.)

To use this strategy in headlines, “prime the pump” with some intriguing but incomplete information. Tell the reader enough to pique curiosity but not enough to give the whole story away—like this famous ad by John Caples does.

Created in 1926, it went on to become one of the most popular and successful ads in history. Scott Delong, the founder of viral content site ViralNova, has it framed in his office.

The ad doesn’t sell piano lessons, it intrigues with the emotional benefit of learning a new skill.

4. Negatives

Superlatives – words like best, biggest, greatest – can be effective in headlines. But it turns out that negative superlatives (like worst) can be even more powerful.

In a study of 65,000 titles, Outbrain compared positive superlative headlines, negative superlatives headlines and no superlative headlines. The study found that headlines with positive superlatives performed 29% worse and headlines with negative superlatives performed 30% better. The average click-through rate on headlines with negative superlatives was 63% higher than with positive ones.

There are a few theories on why this might be.

Positive superlatives may have become clichéd through overuse.

It may be that negatives are more intriguing because they’re more unexpected and thus activate the element of surprise.

Negatives also tap into our insecurities in a powerful way. Using negative words like “stop,” “avoid,” and “don’t” often work because everyone wants to find out if there’s something they’re doing that they should stop.

5. How to

A lot of advertising writers say that if you start with the words “how to,” you can’t write a bad headline. After all, we all want to get smarter and better.

Our friends at Copyblogger say these types of headline go beyond knowledge to work on an even deeper level:

Most people don’t want information. I know you’ve always been taught otherwise, but it’s true. People are drowning in facts. What people really want is a sense of order and predictability in their lives. We want to feel a sense of power over our world. Therefore, we seek out the secrets, tips, hints, laws, rules, and systems that promise to help us gain control and make sense of things.

Witness the incredible staying power of one of the most famous how-to headlines – and one that’s really important to us at Buffer: the book title How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

But even with this proven formula, there are a few tweaks we can make to be sure our headlines spread as far as some of the others we’ve talked about.

The Startup Moon tech blogs headline study found a huge difference between the viral spread of a post titled “How to use Android SDK” and another titled “The beginners guide to Android SDK.” Same concept, different packaging. Adding words like “Introduction”, “The beginners guide”, “In 5 minutes” and “DIY” can provide more viral variations on the how-to.

This tells us you might want to work in something more specific to give readers get a better idea of what they’re going to get.

For example, instead of: “How to get better at organizing your day,” you might try “The 5 minute guide to organizing your day for more focus and productivity.”

6. Numbers

Numbers work well in headlines because humans like predictability and dislike uncertainty.

A study on the psychology of waiting in line found that when we don’t know how long something is going to take, we experience that time differently. If a patient in a waiting room is told that the doctor is running 30 minutes late, he might be annoyed at first but he’ll eventually relax into the wait. But if the patient is told the doctor will be free soon, he spends the whole time nervous and unable to settle down because his expectations are being managed poorly. When we’re in this situation, time actually feels like it’s going slower for us.

Numbers can help by providing that expectation management for us, so we know exactly what we’re getting into. Those might be some of the reasons that a Conductor study found that audiences prefer number headlines to almost any other type.

Additionally, the Startup Moon headline study found that the bigger the number, the farther the post spreads.

7. Audience referencing

Audience referencing basically means using the word “you” or implicating your audience directly with your headline. The copywriter Mel Martin was particularly known for this. He would write headlines like “For golfers who are almost (but not quite) satisfied with their game — and can’t figure out what they’re doing wrong” and this quite similar variation (hey, that means it must have worked, right?)

With an audience referencing headline, your reader immediately feels known and named. This construction gets attention because of the way our brains are fixated on solving problems. It’s part of our survival instinct for our brains to go out and actively search for potential problems we might have – even if they’re as minor as our golf swing or cooking. When you are the precise target audience for a headline, your brain basically says, ‘That’s for me!’

In a study in Norway, researchers tried a variety of different headline styles on a shopping website: “For sale: Black iPhone4 16GB” (the regular headline), “Anyone need a new iPhone4?” (question headline without referencing cues), and “Is this your new iPhone4?” (question headline with referencing cues). They found that question headlines with audience-referencing cues (“Is this your new iPhone4?”) generated higher click-throughs than other types of headlines.

Even if you don’t use the audience referencing headline strategy, it helps to generally keep in mind how strong the human self interest drive is. When you speak to the desires, needs and emotions of your reader, you answer their main question: “What’s in it for me?”

8. Specificity

Another of the six principles of all ideas that “stick”, according Chip and Dan Heath, is to make them concrete – by using specific facts rather than broad statements.

Specific, quantifiable concrete facts—particularly ones that form pictures in our minds—are intensely interesting. Figures imply research, which adds to your legitimacy. But all kinds of specificity are good: digits, names, descriptions, titles, examples, projections, results. Being specific also helps to demonstrate that the article will be in depth.

Being specific appeals to our urge to know what we’re getting into when we click – the same reason numbers are effective – and leads to greater clarity, which readers really prefer as seen in this Conductor study.

It’s also worth noting that the folks at Upworthy, who previously were really high on curiosity gap headlines, are now finding that their data shows that really descriptive headlines—ones that tell you exactly what the content is—are starting to win out over those “curiosity gap” headlines, which tease you by withholding details.

The curiosity gap headlines used to work because people weren’t used to it, but now everybody does it and the curiosity isn’t as strong.

So you may start to find as you try these strategies that one type can work really well for a while and then begin to show diminishing returns. The key is to keep finding new ways to engage your audience by being playful and experimental with what you write and ruthless with how you test.

What headline strategies produce great results for you? Share them with me in the comments!

While I heard about a few of these (Questions, How To, etc.) I never really thought about the element of Surprise or Curiosity. That example with Barack Obama made so much sense!

Even though this is a blog about Headlines (in writing) – I naturally start to think about your examples in other areas related to marketing (movies, commercials, etc…) I could be wrong, but could it be that one of the secrets to making a video viral is the element of surprise?

For example – when you think about Jimmy Fallon’s most successful viral skits (or even SNL and Jimmy Kimmel for that matter) — it usually involved a celebrity/artist/politician who did something hilarious that we never expected them to do. (*cue Michael Bolton’s singing about Jack Sparrow, Justin Timberlake’s “D*** In A Box”, Mrs. Obama’s “Evolution of Dance”, President Obama on “Between Two Ferns”) and the list goes on and on!

The same applies with the concepts of Negatives/Audience Referencing in regards to late-night infomercials. They make the simplest acts look like rocket-science and ask you “Me-Too” questions that convince you to buy a ton of $hi— er…stuff you really don’t need.

Great article and analysis. Always thought questions are best, but maybe they aren’t?

Courtney Seiter

Definitely test with your audience and see what they respond to. You may find that a few different strategies combined can provide you with the best results–everyone likes a little novelty and surprise! 🙂

While I completely agree with this list, I really do think that it depends on the industry whether one would use these techniques or not. I’d love to see more headlines with some sort of surprise or audience referencing, but in my experience with the nonprofit sector, I’ve run into very strict authority who wanted to maintain formal, generic headlines in our email campaigns. You’d think that would lead to utter failure, but for a Quaker nonprofit, it worked very well. Maybe it could’ve done even better by implementing one of the strategies you’ve recommended, but I still think it’s a “too each their own” system by industry. Thanks for the tips! I hope I get to use them at my next opportunity!

doesn’t your 6th point is apposite of your first one? Uncertainty cause surprise

Shahid Iqbal

It’s quite educational

rexgraham

Nice piece. Each category kept me going. You walked the talk. Good headline on your story too. Your images worked very well with the content. Although I might add this: Be brief, but not too brief. You could shorten your headline from 64 to 57 characters this way: 8 survey-tested headline tactics to boost your clicks

I would not click on headlines like that. I’m trying to avoid the marketing echo chamber effect that seems to focus on vanity metrics (clicks).

To me, the appeal of this article was the psychology aspects, the fact that it garners more clicks is largely secondary. Given that courtney expressed an interest in the psychology in the intro, I’m glad she emphasized that aspect.

This really isn’t intended to be a reference guide for various tactics to get clicks. Its more of a strategy overview detailing the psychology behind good headlines – the examples are more there to illustraite the points.

I think a lot of headlines appeal to different demographics through signaling mechanism. My view of Buffer’s brand has always had a more insightful and well researched aspect to it so the ‘psychology’ terminology reinforced that notion.

I think context matters. It is a lot harder to gauge the quality of HP’s articles so the signaling mechanism didn’t matter much at the time. Seeing it linked to at the bottom of another buffer post, however, gave me a lot more confidence.

TL;DR: I think that headline would have got more clicks, but you have to consider the quality of the readership and the demographic your signaling mechanisms are targeting. It’s a balancing act.

I’m always trying to improve my headlines, and these 8 strategies are the icing on the cake. I have my ideas of how to come up with intriguing headlines based on my audience’s reactions and what they click on the most. Based on this, I can figure out the pattern. I say I’m practicing half of this and I do have to say I’m getting better results than I did in the year prior! Thanks for the share and I hope you have a great weekend! Take Care!

Looking at your choices of steering reader involvement (headlines) I think there is something missing. That would be the headline which places people into dialectical groupings for conflict, removing the individual as being the one responsible for their own actions. This arraying of people is not without intent and occurs in many headlines. Its intended to casts aspersions upon the individuals who are assigned to a group (negative or positive) depending upon the group think specific to the writer.
Some examples would be to include as adjectives group identifiers for groups set in antithesis and kept in dialectical conflict by the media. Note that it requires opposite terms in order for dialectics to be the most effective. These are some Ethnic terms used by the media, to group individuals and cast aspersions upon all the individuals within a group no mater the actions of the individuals themselves.
Skin color Ethnic groups: Black VS White
Financial Ethnic Groups: Poor VS Wealthy
Political Ethnic Groups: Democrat VS Republican, Liberal VS Conservative, left VS Right etc
Gender Ethnic Groups: Woman VS Man

Simply flipping through any days headlines will include these Ethnic groupings and the casting of aspersions upon all individuals of a group regardless of each individuals participation in the accounts of the events chronicled. Good writers need to be aware of this practice and not fall into its deceptive practice.

What would you recommend for different way for How to Articles? I mean, Always using How to can get boring. How can I mix it up but still tell the reader it´s a How to, but with different words. Thanks.

Federico Iglesias Ferrara

Great article. I liked the psychology part of it. I should point out that the wrong headline may cost your job.

Recently a newspaper OpEd column headline cost the job to NIcolas Alvarado, media director of Mexico´s largest university, UNAM. The article referred to Juan Gabriel, mexico´s most beloved composer and singer, who had just passed away. The headline – http://bit.ly/nicovsjuanga – translated reads something like – I do not like “Juanga” (what comes guango). I know that I am one of the very few who do not assume Mexican Juan Gabriel as an idol. – using the singer´s nickname to rhyme with “guango” slang for “I don´t care”.

Most people read only the headline, The article basically was about how the news of the singers death had disrupted the writers Sunday as a journalist, but that was enough for public outcry.

Imagine that you’ve written a blog post that can help thousands of people solve a really painful problem. You’ve written the post, edited it, looked it over a few times to make sure that you didn’t miss anything important, and hit ‘publish.’ You send the post out to your list, share it on all of […]